Socialization Between Children And Family

The socialization of the young has a more direct relevance to education.

Although any group must initiate its recruits, the family socialize its young in a different way because of its peculiar structure. This ensures that there is a difference in age between the older members - the parents, and the new recruits - the children. Thus, particularly where the children are young, the parents can exert great power over them.

Family provides not only physical care, but also teaches to the children the parents' interpretation of social reality around them, and it is within the family that the child's personality is developed in the early and the formative years.

The family is not a necessary social institution from the biological point of view, since reproduction of the species does not demand such an organization. But within the limits set by hereditary potentiality the personality is formed, and in most contemporary societies this development takes place best through the socialization of the young within a small group such as the family.

The child learns the patterns of behavior needed to exist in his environment. The young learn not just how to subsist but how to exist socially. Boys learn what to wear and how to treat other boys and girls. They learn what behavior to expect from other children of the same and the other sex. They notice how their parents behave, often internalizing these patterns through their play, as, for example, when children dress up to play at weddings.

It is important to note the complementary nature of any role, since it includes both the expected behavior of that role and also the behavior expected in others towards that role. Furthermore, to be fully competent in their social existence, children must ultimately learn the relevance of third parties to themselves and to the others with whom they interact. It only by knowing each other's roles that we can.cooperate with one another. Children may play at roles like actors in the theatre, but ultimately they become these roles. The girl playing at mother takes on the characteristics of personality associated with women in that society; the personality expected in an American woman is different from that expected in an English woman. In their earliest years children are egocentric, but as they grow older they gradually achieve the capacity to put themselves in the positions of others.

This process takes place mainly within the family. For example, the child comes to know that his mother may be too busy to attend to his immediate needs. In sociological terms he has begun to appreciate that roles are complementary. The child learns that age governs behavior as he watches his mother and father. He comes to have a wider view of adult roles as he makes visits with his parents and observes other adults. He also learns from his parents and other adults the many occupational and leisure roles that are current in his environment. As the child grows older the process becomes more complex.

The older child or adolescent comes into contact at school or at work with values that may be very different from those held within his own family. His parents, as members of an older generation, may not change their values as quickly as the younger generation. There can, therefore, be discontinuities between the values of the family and its young. This becomes more possible after the adolescent has left school, as he meets an even wider range of values. The young worker can have encountered three different and conflicting codes of honesty, that of the home, of the school and of the factory. Thus it is that the process of socialization often ends in conflict and sometimes in rebellion by the adolescent.

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